Jul 08 2011

MODEM’S SONG

Another new track!

Next week is the last week of this contract project. The weekend after that I’m going to TIGJam UK 5, which should be fun! After that I’ll be back to work on my own stuff full time, which will be nice 🙂

Jul 06 2011

THE SHIFT IN INNOVATION

First, some music! It’s a lovely evening, so I wrote some lovely evening music.

– whales of the west

SO. I’ve been thinking about landmark games recently. That is: games which have introduced new ideas, made a huge impact, and gone on to inform dozens of later games. And you know what? These games I feel comfortable pointing to as influential have shifted over the years.

Jun 20 2011

CAN’T DANCE

I’ve been busy working on Arcade Mode. In this mode, naturally, you run around in a nightclub and beat people until money comes out.

Arcade Mode also has epic orchestral techno. What with having its own background and music and mechanics, I think it’s done. Vigilance edges ever closer to completion.

Unfortunately, that last bit of edging may take a few weeks. I’ve started a month-long contract project, which is obviously going to suck up most of my time. The good news is, the income’s going to keep the lights on for several more months until I get this stuff paying for itself!

I’ll get Vigilance done in the odd late night hour and weekend session. It’s too close to “done” to put off for a whole month. I need to ship this thing so all this feature creep’s worth it 😀

MORE DISCO

May 26 2011

CONTRACT

I totally forgot to update yesterday! Reason is, I’m doing a few days’ neat contract work that came up. Sorry. Normal service will resume on Friday as I get back on Vigilance. 😀

May 18 2011

DIVERSION

OKAY so Witcher 2 activated yesterday morning. Since then I have been playing Witcher 2. It is a good thing I am my own boss or I might fire me.

It’s a pretty good game! Even so, being impulsive enough to play newly released games during official Work Time is bad and I will stop it, otherwise this week’s blog entries are going to be pretty sad and lonely.

Incidentally, if you’re getting Witcher 2, for goodness’ sake don’t put it on Hard. It is brutally tough in a quite unusual way. I’m quite concerned that there’s another difficulty level above this one. Jim from RPS says it gets a lot easier later on, which sounds nice; as it is I’m getting killed a bunch of times in every significant battle and I think I might be stuck on a boss fight.

On the plus side, I’m not sure I’d mind restarting on Normal even if I have to. There have already been several things I’d like to try doing another way.

RPS have just put up their review if you’re pondering.

Apr 28 2011

HOLIDAY

It’s seriously tough getting back into the work mindset after a break. I’ve kinda got an excuse, though – Ludum Dare’s coming up this weekend, so I’ll be busy enough very soon!

In the meantime… one thing we did over Easter was pop into Bristol Zoo. Here are a few photos – click through for full size.

Starting tomorrow I seriously need to update WordPress, sort out some anti spam (I just deleted 900 spam comments from the weekend) and get back to work. I’ve had a ton of kickass feedback on last week’s alpha that went out for playtesting, so it’s time to integrate that and go make the game better. 🙂

Apr 22 2011

BREAK

It’s Easter here in the UK and the first hot, sunny weekend of the year to boot – so it’s time to stop working, up sticks and go visit the folks. (And take the laptop.)

See you on Wednesday!

Apr 06 2011

ARCADES

They’re dead. Good riddance.

We got to discussing how arcades had disappeared at CB2 yesterday. Most of the discussion focused around how to make arcades worth going to again, but I’ve been thinking about it since and I’ve come to the conclusion that arcades sucked, and any nostalgia for them is like longing for the days when everyone on the street had to pop down to #26 to watch TV, because they had one, and crowd round their black and white set whenever there was something on one of the three channels.

Photo by Vincent Diamante

Here are the ways arcades suck:

Apr 04 2011

GRADUAL TWEAKS

I started playing through the Metal Gear Solid series again a few weeks ago. MGS1 was great, but even the Twin Snakes version is obviously a bit dated. I’ve just this evening finished MGS2, which feels much more current. The cutscenes don’t half go on though, do they? Perhaps the worst excess in MGS2 is when characters repeat themselves – they literally say the same thing twice, and then other characters will rephrase the same thing again if asked, and so on. Still a phenomenal game, though.

Work on Fight Back continues. I don’t have anything to show for today as such, but I’ve been playing around with the difficulty curve + the AI’s capabilities and smoothing out a few other rough edges. I think I’m mostly putting off adding in non-fighter ship types and bosses and setting up a menu and so on. Maybe I’ve hit the point of project fatigue, but I’m determined to start things I finish instead of hopping projects. I’ll just get on with it tomorrow!

Mar 23 2011

RECOVERY

OK, I’ve been sick for about three days. I figure it’s about time I got better and started remembering how to get work done.

…Maybe tomorrow.